


How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sabrina?

by hacklesacademy (ladyvivien)



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Julie Andrews is a witch, Zelda is Maria von Trapp, not crack but definitely crack-adjacent, the Satanic Choir is basically Evil Glee Club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 17:10:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16496765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyvivien/pseuds/hacklesacademy
Summary: They say the Devil has the best tunes. If that was true, it would make the job of Satanic Choir's new Directrix a lot easier.





	How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sabrina?

Since entrance to the Academy of Unseen Arts asks for a dark baptism as its only admissions requirement and graduation is a complex process involving ritual sacrifice and the blessing of a capricious and vindictive deity, membership of student societies has a tendency to fluctuate. It happens that they're down a mezzo soprano when Sabrina enrolls full-time, so Zelda skips the lengthy audition process and just slots her in.

But while she’s delighted that her niece has joined the Satanic Choir, it does pose certain difficulties. Namely, that she’s about to be found out for something she’d really hoped to keep a secret, at least from her family.

Zelda Spellman has many talents - she's one of the most powerful witches in the Church of Night, she speaks twenty seven languages and it turns out that she wields a flogger like she was born to it - but composing music has never been one of them. She’s perfectly aware that Faustus only offered her the job out of post-coital affection (and because the conductor’s baton has some rather delightful other uses). So what if she cut a few corners? So what if she technically plagiarised? The other students are blissfully ignorant of mortal popular culture and honestly, it’s almost like the songbook from Wicked was made to be adapted into the closing number of a Satanic mass. Her mistake was in getting sentimental, and now she’s going to pay for it.

Her niece reads the sheet music with a bemused expression.

“You didn’t change the lyrics. Not even ‘Doe, a deer that was sacrificed to Satan’ or, or ‘Far, a long, long way from the Dark Lord’s graces’.”

She sniffs. “It’s hardly a hymn, Sabrina. And besides, that wouldn’t scan.”

Sabrina narrows her eyes at her aunt and Zelda feels pinned in place, wonders for a fleeting moment if this is how other people feel when she looks at them.

“I thought you hated this movie. You said that you wanted to resurrect Rogers and Hammerstein so you could string them up by their fingernails and see if they could remember all their favourite things once they’d been tortured for a week.”

Zelda ignores her and focuses her attention on gathering up the sheet music.

It isn’t that she hates it, exactly. It annoys her but it’s been annoying her for so long that the irritation feels comfortingly familiar, like Vinegar Tom’s flatulence or PTA meetings at Baxter High or Hilda.

It's just that once a year, when they’re all gathered in the living room dozing off the excesses of the winter solstice, someone always suggests turning the television on at exactly the moment the orchestra starts up. It’s the one film the whole family can agree on. Sabrina loves old movies, Hilda loves musicals and Zelda loves making sarcastic comments. Ambrose swears blind that the perky woman who won’t stop singing is actually a powerful coven leader in her own right who includes coded Satanic messages in all of her films, and Zelda thinks that deserves whatever support their annual viewing figures offer. They’re all crammed onto one sofa, Ambrose with his feet draped over Hilda’s lap and Sabrina sandwiched between her aunts, and if it’s getting less comfortable as the girl grows up – well, it’s only for a few hours and these years are more fleeting than she’d like to admit.

Anyway, she thinks the song showcases the range of the choir rather well.

"So," Sabrina asks with a wicked grin that should make Zelda proud, not apprehensive, "what other secrets are you hiding, Auntie Z?”

Her defences are down, thanks to a vigorous interlude with Faustus in his office that’s left her bruised and bitten everywhere between her neckline and hem, and she happens to be standing close enough to the lamp for Sabrina to see her blush.

"You're seeing someone!" Sweet, naive girl. If Sabrina really thinks she's been chaste for the past sixteen years, then she's nowhere near as sharp as she thinks she is. "Is it someone at the Academy? Is it..." she trails off in horror and Zelda feels her conscience prick at the thought of how she's been betraying her niece for her own carnal desires. “Oh. Well that’s…that’s very Maria von Trapp of you. You know, looking after his children, teaching us to sing. And it explains what happened to my curtains.”

“Hilda spilled a potion over my best cloak and I didn’t have time to order a new one,” she says with all the hauteur she can muster. 

Sabrina bites her lip, looking so like she did at seven when her biggest concern was that Harvey Kinkle was teasing her at recess, that it makes Zelda want to weep.

“You’re not doing this because of me, are you? So that Father Blackwood will go easier on me?”

For all her gumption, Sabrina is still a child - one not even a quarter way through her first century. How to explain that the answer is both yes and no. That Zelda would do anything to protect her, that they need to regain their family's standing, that whatever Faustus has planned cannot be good, that she hasn't felt so alive in years. 

"It's early days," she says eventually, and it's not entirely a lie. How she'd sustain being the third - or is it fourth? - Lady Blackwood while also raising his secret daughter is a problem for later, and she knows that one day it will be she and not Sabrina who will have to make a choice.

But that's the future and this is now and Sabrina is here at her side, the way she was always meant to be. 

“Did you know the Satanic synod is in New York next year?” she asks. Sabrina shrugs, a ghastly habit Zelda hasn’t quite exterminated. “You’ll be expected to attend, of course – especially after the past few months’ debacle. Perhaps we could add on a couple of days in the city as a holiday, take in some” she shudders dramatically “mortal culture.”

“You mean…”

“Say nothing and you get front row seats to _Hamilton_. Breathe a word of this to anyone and I’ll make sure Lin Manuel Miranda never writes another word as long as he lives.”

Sabrina nods, slowly. She's learning to make deals, to compromise, and that might be the most important thing this school has to teach her.

"You have yourself a deal, auntie." She pauses. “This isn’t going to end with us fleeing the alt right over the Appalachian mountains, is it?”

Zelda snorts. “Not in these shoes. Run along now. You have conjuring after lunch and I have the strangest suspicion that there's going to be a test. On -" she pauses. "Pages 78 to 94 of the textbook. Question 13 is a trick question, any kind of rodent's blood will do."

She hopes she's right. It was hard to focus on the pages when there was so much...activity.

"Not gonna ask how you learned that. Ever. I am never, ever going to ask. But if he ever breaks your heart, I'll hex him so hard that things fall off. _Things_ , Auntie Z."

Sabrina leaves, already rummaging in her bag for her textbook. Zelda should join the faculty for lunch - she has worked up quite an appetite this morning - but she lingers for a moment, enjoying the acoustics of the empty room.

_"Darling sixteen going on seventeen, I'll take care of you."_

 


End file.
